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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28057683">Holy the Firm</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture'>lovetincture</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Annie Dillard - Freeform, Character Study, Gen, Theodicy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 15:48:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>826</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28057683</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Which way do you see the world? Kind or cruel?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dean Winchester &amp; Sam Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Holy the Firm</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Alright, this is the kind of fic whose origin I feel like I need to explain, at least a little. Once upon a time, I was extremely perturbed by "the problem of evil" as it applies to religion, and I was looking for book recs on theodicy. Someone suggested Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard. It... is and isn't a book about theodicy. It is and isn't a book about a lot of things.</p>
<p>Anyway, for some reason I got Dean Winchester in my head and started wondering about his reaction to this book. I really, really think he'd vibe with it, y'all.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He finds the book slipped behind the edge of the standard-issue nightstand, a slim little thing fit into the cracks. He finds it while doing something that’s absolutely not looking for Sam’s secrets—for that thing he’s hiding from Dean, unknown but so ever-present, blaring bright and unavoidable. He looks for drugs, spells, mysterious phone numbers and addresses, <em>something.</em></p>
<p>He finds a little book. He shoves it in his duffel bag without thinking, an unexamined impulse, like ordering Dr. Pepper instead of Coke. It’s no big deal. He doesn’t even fully intend to read it.</p>
<p>He does, though.</p>
<p>He finds himself alone often, the kind of alone he hasn’t been for the better part of the last four years. Sam sneaks out of the room at odd times, casting furtive glances at Dean as he eases the door open and shut, quick, so the light from the parking lot only slants across the room for a moment, barely making a sound. Barely.</p>
<p>He’s good. He’s quiet. He probably wouldn’t wake Dean if Dean was still in the habit of sleeping. He isn’t, though—in the habit of sleeping. Not really, not since hell. He notices Sam’s comings and goings at 2 and 3 and 4 a.m. He leans in close to get a whiff of him in the mornings, but Sam’s always across the room and into the shower before Dean can really manage.</p>
<p>He could say something about it. He doesn’t.</p>
<p>He can hardly sleep worth a damn anymore, not without more booze than he can really afford while chasing down the bitch that’s angling to kick off the apocalypse, and without Sam here there’s no real use pretending anyway. He can’t sleep, so he reads. The little book finds its way out of his bag and into his hands. He flips on the bedside lamp.</p>
<p>Holy the Firm.</p>
<p>The book is stamped ‘Bedford County Library.’ Its pages are slightly yellowed, soft and crinkled to the touch. It smells like an old book, like every library across every small town in America. He worries about Sam, thoughts turning dark and troubled. He reads.</p>
<p>It’s boring to start, just some lady talking about her house, her cat—waking up in the morning and tossing the cat onto the floor. The spider in her bathroom. Why does anybody read this crap?</p>
<p>He reads it because it’s something to do. Because he’s jacked off twice and couldn’t dig up anything incriminating in Sam’s browser history—not that he really thought he would, but he’d been hoping there’d at least be some porn he could razz Sam about—something, anything. He reads it because after a certain time of night, the pixelated glow of the television sears his eyes, and the blare of canned laughter burrows under his skin.</p>
<p>“We are sown into time like so much corn,” the book says.</p>
<p>It’s not a very long book. The writer goes off on a tear about the god of days, mankind abandoned to its own devices. It’s manic and mad. Dean feels his own lip pulling up at the corner. There’s a thread in it, a certain rhythm that he starts to find. It clatters like hoofbeats through the book. A little girl named Julie Norwich. Salt and fire.</p>
<p>He can’t tell if Annie Dillard believes in God or not. She talks like she hates him, or like she loves him. She talks like he’s strange and incomprehensible to her, and Dean can relate, having an infuriating, incomprehensible locus of his own. Salt and fire and little flamefaced children—he starts to wonder if she was a hunter. She knew one, he’d bet anything.</p>
<p>“Julie Norwich is salted with fire,” the book says. “She is preserved like a salted fillet from all evil.”</p>
<p>Julie Norwich went down in a plane crash, in one of those stupid hobby planes that rich people fly.</p>
<p><em>Jesus,</em> Dean thinks.</p>
<p>He’s expecting more, somehow. He’s expecting to know how the story ends, whether the little girl is saved or not, whether she’s healed. He doesn’t get what he wants. It just—ends.</p>
<p>Julie Norwich, salted and burned like a bag of bones. Julie Norwich, Schrödinger's disfigured child.</p>
<p>Angry tears prick at the corners of his eyes, and he wonders where they came from. It depends on which way you see the world, he guesses, kind or cruel, how the story ends. He knows which one he picks. It’s the one he always picks. It’s not like he’s ever had a choice.</p>
<p>He tosses the book into the corner and stares up at the ceiling. He flicks off the light and stares into the dark and knows better than to wait for sleep that won’t come.</p>
<p>He waits for Sam instead. Waits for familiar headlights and quiet footfalls to tell half-finished tales he doesn’t want to believe.</p>
<p>Which way do you see the world? he asks the dark. Kind or cruel?</p>
<p>Somewhere, Julie Norwich sleeps.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The quoted passages are from Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard. You can find me on <a href="http://twitter.com/lovetincture">Twitter</a>.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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